Irrigation has been practiced for thousands of years and not much has changed in how it is practiced. Irrigation had been limited to water movement by gravity, animal and human power, and then later windmills and steam engines were employed to move water as those technologies developed. The development of the internal combustion engine enabled by the use of steel and large dams having been enabled by the use of concrete has provided the reservoirs and the devices to move stored water great distances to be applied to fields. These technologies also enabled deep wells and pumps to draw water up from the depths of aquifers such as the Ogallala aquifer in the south central United States. Steel pipes carry the water to the ends of the fields for furrow irrigation or above the fields for pivot irrigation. These technologies have been in place since the 1960's. Water movement under human control was supplemented by automatic control in the 1970's and 1980's which is further enabled by developments in microprocessors and sensors which can provide a signal that a measured amount of water has been delivered to a certain point in the field or that a certain amount of water had been applied to the field.
Water control has evolved into field water management in the 1990's and early 2000's. Point monitoring and control of water became distributed control thanks to the development of wired and wireless networks and global positioning systems (GPS). Field data collection, weather data collection and site specific irrigation control could be performed at different locations.
What is needed in the art is a new and cost efficient method and apparatus for managing water.